Musicalis Interruptus is a form of Musical Gag. A song is gearing up or getting into full swing, and something interrupts the singer, so the music abruptly stops. Heroes will interrupt villains. Villains will interrupt the hero. Sidekick types will interrupt either or both. Sometimes the singer will even interrupt himself. Occasionally used by Media Watchdogs to allow the song to flavor the scene, but stop short of something they consider objectionable for the audience.

Five years and two and a half hundred chapters later, they square off again, and Ichigo is ready to turn the tables on him. Aizen gloats how he is going to break Ichigo's sword in one blow, his Ominous Latin Chanting builds up to a crescendo... And cuts off when Ichigo catches his blade with his bare hand, mirroring their previous example. But it does not stop there, as Aizen attempts to use his other trump card, Kido #90: Black Coffin, again gloating how it will basically swallow Ichigo in a black hole... And again his music cuts off as Ichigo shatters it effortlessly.

School Days does this at least twice, in episodes 5 and 6, each time using previous ending themes. And it's not played for laughs, especially in episode 6, when the music stops as soon as Kotonoha reaches the school rooftop and sees Makoto making out with Sekai.

Happens in episode 11 of Rozen Maiden. "Battle of Rose" plays whilst Shinku fights Suigintou, who proceeds to crush her against a junk pile, cutting the music.

Fushigi Yuugi does it in episode 34: Miaka and friends find the Shinzaho, the MacGuffin needed to summon Suzaku. The ending theme "Tokimeki no Doukasen" plays, and then...they find out they have A Shinzaho, not The Shinzaho.

A diegetic example in Trigun, when one of a gang of marauders threatens Legato in a bar, and the jazz band continues to play through physical abuse of a captured girl and gunfire scattered around Legato. The saxophonist, one of Legato's henchmen, abruptly stops when Legato finally gives the gangster his full attention.

Well played in an early episode of Kanon, when Yuuichi unintentionally barges in on Makoto in the bath.

Often used in Kiniro Mosaic, but a noticeable instance is in episode 2 when Aya ruins a poignant moment with a logical comment. And again in episode 6 when she's interrupted by Shinobu floating down the stream.

Irresponsible Captain Tylor. After the crew of the Soyokaze escape from quarantine and declare that their Born Lucky captain must surely be alive and that they're going to rescue him, the Leitmotif that always plays when the crew starts doing something awesome is suddenly interrupted by a squad of armed guards ordering them back into detention.

Played for Drama: Right after Luffy beats Caesar, the music abruptly stops... because Caesar is using his powers to choke Luffy into unconsciousness.

As part of the Straw Hats and Law arrive in Zou, Ryunosuke (the drawn dragon that took them there) is dying. A sentimental, grandiose soundtrack plays in the background while Luffy, Usopp, Robin and Franky cry for him. The music (and cries) simply stops as the scene cuts to Zoro and Law, who say crying over a bad drawing is just ridiculous.

This trope signifies that Kenshiro has shown up to stop the bad guy. Permanently. Usually happens in the middle of an attack.

The penultimate episode of Jojos Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders has an odd Meta version of this. Near the end of the opening theme song, DIO appears behind Jotaro seemingly via teleportation; the previous episode revealed that DIO has the power to stop time, so this time it's shown happening from his perspective. When the singers get to the lyric "End of the World", DIO cuts them off by shouting "THE WORLD!", which puts the song on hold until he gets into position and restarts time again.

In the start of Haikyuu!!'s second season, there's epic soundtrack as the team gets briefed on the Tokyo training camp they're going to take part when summer vacation starts. The whole team is making plans and excited... until Takeda-sensei mentions the camp is going to be on the same day as the remedial classes. Cue music stop as the team's poorer students (Hinata, Kageyama, Tanaka and Nishinoya) go through Blue with Shock, Blank White Eyes and Color Failure.

The Little Mermaid has some of the funniest, a particular one being "Daughters of Triton", meant to be the singing debut of Ariel, which is interrupted when she doesn't show. Apparently mermaids don't have aquatic stage managers.

In The Great Mouse Detective Ratigan's song "The World's Greatest Criminal Mind" is interrupted mid point when one of his henchmen Bartholomew (who's incredibly drunk) sings "To Ratigan the world's greatest rat!", this pisses off Ratigan who despises being called a rat and as punishment he feeds him to his pet cat Felicia, after a period of mourning from the other henchmen he tells them, "I trust there will be no further interruptions!" while threatening them with the bell he used to call her, they then pick up where they left off.

In The Book of Life, "I Will Wait," "Just A Friend" and "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" all end this way. The former is cut off by Carlos dragging Manolo off to prepare for the bullfight, while the latter two are stopped by Chuy attacking the Rodriguez brothers.

In Toy Story 3 when the heroes are captured and placed in bins reminiscent of the classic movie prison Hamm plays a somber harmonica that is interrupted by Buzz banging on the cell bars telling him to knock it off.

In the beginning of The Sponge Bob Movie Sponge Out Of Water, the talking seagulls begin singing the Theme Song, but Burger-Beard stops them and threatens to burn them, showing the same thing happened to his parrots. It happens again before the credits. Bubbles interrupts the theme song and expresses his hatred of it and, apropos of nothing, goes into a rap battle with one of the seagulls.

Robin Hood gets this treatment in Shrek when Fiona gets fed up with his unwanted "rescue" and the ensuing musical number. She cuts him off during a high note with a flying kick to the face before demolishing the rest of his men.

Films — Live-Action

In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the prince of swamp castle wants to break out in song but his father intentionally interrupts him every time ("And no singing!"). Eventually however, the king is unable to prevent it when it becomes a Crowd Song production number. Interestingly, the audience never does get to hear the whole song, outside of a ridiculously overextended introduction.

Prince Edward starts to reprise "True Love's Kiss" during the showstopping "That's How You Know" sequence, and gets about four words out before being run over by a pack of bicyclists. Later, after finally finding Giselle, Edward attempts to reprise the song again, this time stopped when Giselle drops her cue.

At the end, at Edward and Nancy's wedding, "Ever, Ever After" is interrupted by her cellphone ringing which she throws away.

The Water and Power guys interrupt Tank Girl and Jet Girl as they force everyone at Liquid Silver to sing Cole Porter's "Let's Do It".

In the movie version of Little Shop of Horrors, the reprise of "Suddenly Seymour" is interrupted (and Lampshaded) by a marketing guy... "Excuse me, pardon me, beg your pardon, If you two kids would stop singing for just a moment, I've got something I want to discuss with you."

Also done in the original cut of the proposal, Audrey cuts the reprise short with "What am I doing here singing? I've gotta go get ready."

Blazing Saddles - the Buddy BizarreNumber "The French Mistake" is interrupted twice: once when a dancer trips, and once when the fight comes crashing in from the Blazing Saddles set next door.

Joe Dirt provides an interesting example where one of the characters indirectly interrupts the background music. As Joe decides to return to Silver City, Blue Oyster Cult's Burnin' For You begins to play. However, the song is interrupted when a car drives up to Joe, with Bachman-Turner Overdrive's You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet blasting from their radio. The song drowns out and eventually replaces the background music.

10 Things I Hate About You starts with One Week playing, and eventually it cuts to a group of girls listening to it in their car. Then Kat drives up playing Bad Reputation, which changes to the background song.

The Rocketeer. The Big Bad, Hollywood movie star Neville Sinclair, is filming a swashbuckling sword-fight scene (with the usual dramatic music playing over it) until the moment Sinclair's female co-star (a relative of the director) delivers her line in an incredibly corny manner. Sinclair's swashbuckling smile vanishes and the music comes to an instant stop.

Played decidedly not for laughs in M. We never hear the killer whistle the famous climax of In The Hall of the Mountain King; he repeatedly builds up to that point and abruptly stops, usually when he's made the decision to kill his next victim. As a result, the audience associates whatever horrors happen offscreen with the unheard climax. The overall effect is downright terrifying.

Also decidedly not played for laughs in Ran, where one battle scene starts out with silent action overlaid with a sorrowful music and then jarringly switches to the sound and fury of the battle with no music.

'The Skeletons of Quinto' in A Mighty Wind. After a twenty minute introduction setting the scene for the song (most of which happens off-screen), The Folksmen are about to launch into this number when they are rushed off-stage because Mitch and Mickey have finally turned up.

In the movie 9, the song "Take It All" in the film stops abruptly about three words before the song actually finishes. This is used for dramatic effect, the director said in a commentary about it, because "there is nothing left to say".

In "Camp Rock", at Final Jam, one of the songs gets cut short beacuse the singer notices someone useing a cellphone.

Another Asian movie where it's background music and not played for laughs: In Temptation of a Monk, there's a deer hunt. When the deer is hit, instead of us seeing the arrow hit the deer, it's represented by the footage of the deer slowing down and freeze-framing. When this happens, the background music slows down and, at the freeze-frame, slowly fades out.

In Love Actually, the PM (Hugh Grant's character) starts singing and dancing all over the place, only to be interrupted by one of his associates.

In What a Girl Wants, Colin Firth tries out his old rock-and-roll clothing, and starts playing air guitar. His fiancee interrupts him. When she goes on, he plays a final cord on his air guitar.

At the toga party in Animal House, a whimsical folksinger (played by Stephen Bishop, who wrote and performed the movie's theme song) is strumming a wistful ballad to two young girls on the stairs. Bluto seizes the guitar and smashes it against the wall, then mutters a sheepish apology.

In Get Smart, an orchestra is playing the "Ode to Joy" as part of a concert for the visiting President. Maxwell Smart manages to tackle the conductor and disrupt the orchestra moments before the song ends, because he's figured out that the closing notes will trigger the bomb that's hidden in the concert hall.

In 3 Idiots, the insert song played when our main characters manage to make their upperclassman's helicopter-prototype work( and they equipped it with a camera!). Cue the scene where they found said upperclassman dead body hanging on a ceiling fan

"Maria" comes to a pause when Maria rushes in after coming back from the hills, washes her face at a well, then leaves to put on her nun outfit.

"I Have Confidence" - Maria stops in the middle when she sees the sheer size of the Von Trapp house. She murmurs "oh help" before slowly picking the song back up again.

"My Favorite Things" ends abruptly when the Captain walks in on Maria and the children.

The reprise of "Eidelweiss" has the Captain unable to continue as he's overcome with emotion. This prompts Maria and the rest of the family - and eventually the entire audience - to join in.

Inversion in Mean Girls. The Plastics are performing "Jingle Bell Rock" at the talent show - as in just dancing along to the music. Gretchen accidentally breaks the CD player but Cady thinks on her feet and starts singing the song. The rest of the audience are prompted to join in and Ms Norbury plays the piano to save the performance.

In 'The Time Machine (2002)'', the protagonist attempts to gather information about time travel from a library hologram in 2030s New York. The protagonist can't get a word in edgewise as the computer begins to tell him about the H.G. Well's story, and begins to sing selections from the score of a (fictional) Broadway adaptation. The protagonist leaves, cutting off the song and background music.

Downplayed in Into the Woods. No One Is Alone is sung in its entirety, but the very last line is interrupted by the Giantess's footsteps. But thankfully, the soundtrack averts this.

In The Wizard of Oz, The Wicked Witch of the West's entrance interrupts the munchkins singing "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead".

A more abrupt and tragic interruption occurs during Season 7's "Selfless," where there's a flashback to Anya during the musical and she's singing about getting married and how happy she is and mid-song it abruptly cuts to the present...where Buffy has just impaled Anya on a sword.

In The Monty Python's Flying Circus "Summarize Proust" sketch has one entrance being a choir. They start singing :"Proust, in his first book, wrote about, wrote about..." and are cut off by the contests's buzzer.

This is the whole point of the Wayne and Wanda sketches in The Muppet Show.

One episode of involved a gang of thieving prairie dogs. Thier musical number, "The Best Things in Life are Free", in which they steal everything in a barbershop, is cut short by Fozzie as Bear on Patrol from the sketches of the same name.

Indeed, if we were to list every instance of a Muppet character getting blown up/eaten/yanked offstage by a giant hook/interrupted in some bizarre fashion mid-song, we'd be here all day.

In an SCTV takeoff on the movie "Melvin and Howard," Melvin Dummar gets Howard Hughes to join with him in singing "The Name Game." All goes well until Hughes tries to sing a verse using the name "Chuck," leading Dummar to smack Hughes in the mouth before he gets to the inevitable naughty word...

Hughes: Chuck, chuck, bo buck...banana fanna fo —" (SMACK)

A pair of comedians on the game show Make Me Laugh were singing "The Name Game" and started "Art'. They stopped themselves at "banana fanna fo ... oh." About ten seconds later, one of them announced "I'll do Chuck", prompting a "Nooo!" from the other, at which point the contestant lost it.

Happened to Picard in the episode "A Fistful of Datas". He's attempting a clarinet minuet (with his Ressikan flute), and is interrupted repeatedly with various crew members knocking on his door asking for something or other.

In the episode "Qpid", Geordi tries to pluck a melody on an untuned lute with little success. Worf remedies the terrible noise by violently smashing it against a nearby tree and handing it back to Geordiwith an apology.

Happens in Spectacular! when Stavros finally finds out that Nikko has been lying to him.

One episode of Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger features three monsters, who are parodies of the rangers, break out into their own version of the show's theme tune...until Abarekiller walks in and tells them to stop goofing off.

In the first episode of Glee, the club gets through about thirty seconds of You're The One That I Want before Mercedes interrupts to complain about having to be one of the background singers. In episode 11 Rachel and Finn get through even less of the same song before Finn feels the need to speak up about Rachel's "sad clown hooker" getup (she was dressed the same as Sandy at the end ofGrease). The club finally gets through a complete rendition of it...three seasons later, after Rachel and Finn have graduated.

In the season 2 premiere, Rachel and the new Filipino transfer student Sunshine have a (one-sided, Sunshine thinks she's just made a new friend) sing-off in the bathroom with the song Telephone. They get to the end of the first chorus before Sue Sylvester walks in and tells them to shut up.

Contemplative scenes in Scrubs are often accompanied by singing and guitar music. In one episode, Dr. Cox has had enough of this. He approaches the musician, takes the guitar, and smashes it into pieces.

In between items on the Morecambe and Wise Show, musician Arthur Tolcher would come on stage and begin to play his harmonica, only to be stopped after a few bars and told: "Not now, Arthur!" At the very end of the show, following the credits, he would come on and play - only for the screen to cut to black.

Star Trek: Voyager. "The Thaw" involves a rogue program (in the form of a Monster Clown) who has taken over a Lotus-Eater Machine, holding those within hostage with his murderous and insane antics. Voyager's Emergency Medical Hologram is sent in to negotiate with him. At one point the Clown and his chorus are dancing in a conga line when the EMH appears and the music stops dead.

In the All That pilot, Annie (portrayed by Katrina Johnson) makes three attempts to sing, "Tomorrow", each of which gets a ridiculous interruption. First, someone dumps flour on her. Then, an explosion occurs, but Annie continues singing, until the show cuts to a new sketch. Finally, the announcer and the audience become so annoyed with Annie, security carries her offstage.

The Jester/narrator is interrupted at least twice, once at the end of the first episode, when Madalena calls him back to bed, and in the last episode of the first season the other prisoners make him shut up when he tries to recap the events of the season in song.

Galavant tries to sing "Moment in the Sun" three times, once interrupted by chloroform. When he's finally allowed to sing it, he realizes that the song really only has one line, leaving everyone rather underwhelmed.

In an episode of The Good Guys, a sexy song plays when everyone at the precinct sees Liz wearing a sexy dress for an undercover sting operation but it stops when she drops her purse and tries awkwardly to pick it up.

Farscape. The episode "Scratch 'n' Sniff" has John Crichton relating to Pilot via flashbacks the bizarre events that got them thrown off a Pleasure Planet, including D'Argo being given a potion that made him dance. The dance music (and flashback) is brought to an abrupt halt by Pilot saying—

Pilot: Stop stop STOP! This makes no sense; YOU make no sense!

Music

Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, movement IV, "Intermezzo Interotto", begins with a beautiful, flowing melody that is interrupted partway through with a mocking parody of a theme from Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony, the rendering of which is hilariously insipid. Eventually the interruption putters out and the original theme resumes.

Used at the very end of Ayreon's Rock OperaThe Human Equation - just as "Me" is waking from his coma and the music is playing in all its glory, it's interrupted by a series of beeps and a voice saying that the Human Equation program is being aborted and the Dream Sequencer system is now off-line. Then another voice (probably a Forever) says that it can remember emotions.

Happens frequently on The Beatles Anthology releases. Something will cause the band to stop playing and abort the take. This usually results in either laughter or shouting, depending on what caused it.

The Beach Boys sessions for "Help Me Ronda" (the Today! album version) were plagued by the band's drunk manager (and father of the Wilsons), Murry Wilson constantly interrupting the takes and telling the band what to do. The band tried to record the song for well close to an hour and at points Brian Wilson gets so annoyed that he shouts at his father, reminds him of how he injured him (Murry hit Brian in the ear which is thought to have contributed to his partial deafness), tries to send him out of the room and eventually the band just give up. They were so dissatisfied with this session's recording of the song that they rerecorded it soon after as "Help Me, Rhonda" (the single version, also put on Summer Days).

Occurs in "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream." Dylan sings the opening line "I was riding on the Mayflower" before breaking down in laughter over the whole band missing their cue. The recording engineer and Dylan briefly pause to laugh, then the words "Alright, take two!" are heard and Dylan starts all over again, properly accompanied this time.

The Clash's version of "Wrong 'Em Boyo" begins with a stanza of "Stagger Lee," which is interrupted by a cry of "Start all over again!" before "Wrong 'Em Boyo" proper starts.

Stan Freberg's parody cover of "I've Got You Under My Skin," after many mishaps, abruptly ends when it reaches the word "stop."

In J.S. Bach's "The Art of the Fugue," the final fugue is incomplete due to Author Existence Failure; many performances leave it that way.

The ingenious Bait-and-Switch approach of the pirated version of the Brentalfloss album "Bits of Me" is built around this very trope (except for the first track, which just contains different lyrics by Brent). Every first ten-fifteen seconds of the track is heard and is then interrupted by somenail-grindingsound effect, (or in the case of the album's engineer, who has two tracks, Letting the Air Out of the Band) and goes on to either something totally random, or chastising the listener for pirating the album... or worse, BOTH. Of course, the final track even goes so far as to play all of the tracks from the album at once. No waiting. No track changing. ALL. AT. ONCE. The result is the kind of musical torture that is so great, by the end of the track, you will be reduced to ahelpless,mindlessvegetable, all because you pirated something that took a great amount of hard work and money to create...

At the end of Vangelis's "Pulstar", the epic finale is interrupted by a sample of the British Speaking Clock.

mindXpander's "Connection Reset By Peer", the last track on Triumphant Return, skips to a halt at the end, like a malfunctioning CD or interrupted audio stream (hence the title).

Radio

In an episode of The Goon Show in which Jim Pills is brought on to sing while Seagoon and Bloodnok are deep in thought. Naturally Mr. Pills is given a grand orchestral buildup, and just as he starts to sing Bloodnok shouts "I've got it, Seagoon, I've got it!"

From The Burkiss Way, an Old Grey Whistle Test spoof brings us the classic delta bluesman, "Caught Short" Williamson:

"Caught Short": [plays opening riff] Well I woke up this mornin'... OoOoh!

[Music stops, sound of running feet, door slams in distance]

Whispering Bob Harris: ...Yeah, that was great, Caught Short, really great. And you can hear four hundred and fifty-seven of Caught Shorts other numbers on the new Blue Horizon single "Second Door on the Left Revisited"...

This was one of the numerous running gags infesting The Jack Benny Program, in that Jack Benny would futilely attempt to reign in his quartet, The Sportsmen, from going crazy with their latest wacky song, by repeatedly hollering at them "WAIT A MINUTE!" Sometimes some of the cast, especially one of Mel Blanc's avatars, would join in trying to stop the Sportsmen.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has Zaphod building up a speech after landing on the planet Margrathea with Marvin cueing up "Thus Spracht Zarathrustra" until Zaphod tells him to "can it."

Theater

Legally BlondeLOVES this trope, using it to varying extents in at maybe half'' the songs.

In the play Sheik, Rattle and Roll, there is a running joke involving the a character called the Lost Legionnaire attempting to sing his signature song "I'm Wandering" and continually being interrupted after the first line. He eventually gets to sing the whole thing towards the end of Act 2.

Evil Dead: The Musical: Ed, a person who gets constantly interrupted dialogue-wise and later gets turned into "the bit-part demon" because of it, is about to break out into his own musical number, and is promptly shot by Ash.

Carlotta's rendition of "Think of Me" is interrupted when the Phantom causes a backdrop to fall behind her, and later he causes her to start croaking in the middle of an aria.

The Phantom's entrance interrupts everyone's singing "Masquerade".

The Phantom gets his own back at the show's climax, when Christine rips off his mask mid-song.

In Love Never Dies, Gustave's scream interrupts the Phantom at the end of "The Beauty Underneath" when he removes his mask.

In the opera The Rake's Progress, Baba the Turk's aria of rage is interrupted in the second act, when Tom pulls a wig over her face. She resumes singing it in the third act immediately after the wig is taken off.

In Wicked's opening scene, the song accompanying Elphaba's birth gets cut off by the midwife screaming at the sight of the green-skinned infant.

In Follies, the number "Live, Laugh, Love" never reaches an ending. Ben gradually stops singing and starts ranting about his life. The chorus tries to continue the number on their own, but this only leads to a Madness Montage.

Company has Bobby interrupt the last "Company" reprise to begin "Being Alive" (as well as the last chord of "Another Hundred People" cut short for dialogue).

In Carousel, after Billy dies, Julie, at Nettie's prompting, begins to sing "You'll Never Walk Alone" but breaks down in tears after a few lines. Nettie takes over from her.

The revue New Faces of 1952 (filmed as New Faces) did this as a Running Gag with the emcee singing "He Takes Me Off His Income Tax" with her every entrance, usually getting off five lines before being silenced.

In We Will Rock You, Killer Queen starts to sing the opening verse "Don't Stop Me Now" to celebrate the defeat of The Bohemians, when she is interrupted by Commander Kashoggi, who informs her that Galileo & Scaramouche were able to escape. He, of course, pays the penalty.

P.D.Q. Bach's oratorio The Seasonings includes a Fugue for Orchestra which begins with the first violins introducing a subject which runs on for a ridiculous 40 seconds (with a number of fakeout breakpoints) before any other instruments can join; it gets cut off soon after. A later recitative is interrupted in a different way: the text ends "but in vain, for he interrupted her, saying," but the ritornello of the following aria obliterates last syllable of this and the following cadence.

Some productions of the stage version of Little Shop of Horrors also use this gag-Audrey dies before finishing the reprise of 'Somewhere That's Green'. It generally ruins the moment.

In Cats, during the chorus of the Prologue ("Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats"), a man's shoe is thrown out in front of them. They stop, look at the shoe for a second, and start back up again.

The clattering and sirens that hail Macavity's arrival cut off songs a couple of times, as well.

During Thirteen Eddie starts to sing a reprise of "Hey Kendra" but Lucy cuts him off

In Carrie the Musical the chorus of "Dream On" is cut off by Carrie's scream.

Cabaret: In the scene where Fraulein Schneider considers ending her engagement with Herr Schultz and he attempts to reassure her, there is a moment when he seems to be succeeding and they start a reprise of the song they sang when he proprosed — which is interrupted after a few lines by somebody throwing a brick through Herr Schultz's window, ending the song and the engagement.

Drood is based on an unfinished work by Charles Dickens. It's performed as a play within a play, and during one number, the song falls apart, and after an awkward second, the theater manager announces that this was the point at which Mr Dickens "laid down his pen forever".

The police theme ends in the prologue when the Bishop backs up Valjean's alibi.

The students' activities at the ABC Cafe halt when Gavroche tells them Gen. Lamarque is dead..

In the opera Street Scene, "Wrapped in a Ribbon and Tied in a Bow" seems to be building into a big ensemble dance, with Mrs. Maurrant dancing with Lippo, when her jealous husband walks in and the music dies out instantly.

In The Cat and the Fiddle, "She Didn't Say 'Yes'" never makes it through a full verse, though it's a different verse each time. The one time it isn't interrupted before the end is when Shirley turns on a gramophone recording of it and starts singing the words from the fifth line of the third verse.

In Li'l Abner, "The Matrimonial Stomp" is always interrupted right before it finishes, though Marryin' Sam several times tries to restart it with, "And so, with my blessing, I pronounces you man and—" An ending for the song was written but not used.

In Mamma Mia!, Sophie sings "What's the Name of the Game?" but she abruptly ends it by asking Bill "Are you my father?" instead of singing the title.

In Jesus Christ Superstar, "Roll On Up, Jerusalem" ends with Jesus trashing the market stands around the temple.

In Hamilton, the "Stay Alive" reprise has the sound of a bass drum representing Phillip's heart beat and it stops when he dies.

In The Drowsy Chaperone, the finale of the Show Within a Show, I Do, I Do in the Sky is cut short when the power goes out. The Man in the Chair insists that the audience hold the last moment of the show in their mind, and when his super finally restores the power, the cast sings the last note as if nothing had gone wrong, and he quickly turns off the record. According to him, the show's ruined anyways.

In Paint Your Wagon, Jennifer's encore and second-act reprise of "I Talk To The Trees" are both cut short.

Video Games

Almost every Rhythm Game uses this, if you wind up getting a game over in the middle of a song.

Explanation for those not familiar: In most Super Robot Wars games, a boss' theme song will override the individual theme songs of the player-controlled characters. Due to a programming error in Super Robot Wars Original Generation, the song "Trombe!", theme of boss-turned-ally Elzam von Branstein, will override everything, even other boss themes. This ended up becoming Memetic Mutation, and eventually official in later games featuring Elzam.

Also in Super Robot Wars K, if you fight Shinn on Stage 19, "Zips" by T.M. Revolution will override your regular themes.

Fire Bomber also likes to do this (due to the nature of the mecha's attacks being songs). They even override the final boss theme if you use TRY AGAIN on it!

Final Fantasy VI : Ultros plans to interrupt the opera by dropping a 4 ton weight on the lead singer's head. You manage to stop him, but during the struggle you all fall onto the stage, knocking out several important cast members. The Impresario wings it and turns the subsequent boss fight into the final act, complete with a new song.

Happens at least once or twice in the Ace Attorney series - the big damn "objection!" music starts playing, only to be suddenly interrupted by the prosecutor, usually simply by the protagonist seeing his counterpart with a sneaky smile on his/her face and realizing that rather than being on top of the game, he's about to be pounded big time.

Done by accident in Rockman Exhaust: the final boss enters the room with the normal boss music playing, but it abruptly stops once he's revealed... then the real final boss music plays once he starts transforming.

In Pierce's loyalty mission in Saints Row IV, Pierce and the Boss sing along to Biz Markie's "Just a Friend" playing on the car radio. Evidently, the song is so catchy that even Zinyak joins in singing with them, though he utterly butchers the song by singing it like an opera. Both the Boss and Pierce are furious and spend a good amount of time cussing him out.

Star Fox 64: When enough enemies have been shot down after the force field is disabled on Bolse, Star Wolf will appear, with the team's theme song replacing the music that was playing before they showed up.

Yet another example comes from this flash, where Rose and John are confronting Bec Noir after he brutally murders their respective parents in cold blood. Just as the music ramps up, with tension rising every moment, Bec Noir teleports behind John and stabs him through the heart.

In Act III, Captain Hammer gets frozen in time just before the high note of his song "Everyone's a Hero"... and then he finishes the song after Dr. horrible gets a song in. The song Horrible interrupts with is "Slipping", during which he interrupts himself.

Dr. Horrible: This world is going to BURN! BURN! (to a reporter taking notes) Yeah, that's two R's, H-O-R-R...right. BURN!

Done frequently in the review show Crossed, where the music often stops in the middle of an explanation of the movie's plot, just the time for Karim to insert a sarcastic remark, berfore starting again.

Averted, then played straight in Deck'd. Shaun expresses dismay that Peter wasn't decked in the middle of his song, and then when Fred hits Peter again, it is in the middle of the song...to Shaun's delight.

In Dragon Ball Z Abridged, when Vegeta finally has enough and decides to power-up to Super Saiyan to defeat the seemingly-invincible Broly, his epic Bruce Falconer music plays...Only to immediately stop when Broly just casually curb-stomps him, and proclaiming that Vegeta should believe in him now.

Western Animation

The 1990s iteration of the Fantastic FourAnimated Series has the newly flame-powered Frankie Raye bursting into song. Johnny interrupts her with a kiss, mainly because the next lyric is considered inappropriate for a kids' show.

Mickey and the Beanstalk has an interrupted song. Goofy is singing about food because he, Mickey, and Donald are all starving. Mickey rushes in and interrupts him by shouting "BEANS!" Goofy and Donald stare at Mickey like he's nuts, and the beans eventually get spilled, which leads to the fairy tale happening.

In the two part American Dad! where the family moves to Saudi Arabia, one of the locals begins to sing. He's then shot dead since singing is against the law.

Also subverted in this same episode, as Francine sings her song about how Saudi Arabia is the 'worst place in the world' (if you're a girl), in public, in a very skimpy costume (complete with provocative dancing, including rapid-fire kissing a whole string of stunned Saudi Arabian men). There is nothing Stan or the outraged locals can do to stop her until she completes her song, no matter how many death sentences she accumulates along the way.

Happens to Baljeet by Candace in the Phineas and Ferb episode, "The Wizard Of Odd". Baljeet spends the rest of the episode complaining about how everyone else got to finish their solo except him.

Happens to Monogram in "Rollercoaster: The Musical". He tries again later in the episode, only to be interrupted by a cut to the next scene. During The Stinger, he gets interrupted again by the end credits.

In "Moon Farm", this happens when Baljeet gets into an argument with the soundtrack.

Happens to Eugene in the Hey Arnold! movie, with Arnold stating simply that it's not that kind of movie (much to Eugene's chagrin).

The Bakshi Mighty Mouse episode "This Island Mouseville" has Mighty Mouse in a fish-slapping fight with an alien cat, and during the fight they sing their lines. The alien cat lampshades it:

This is ridiculous. Why are we singing?!

Happens in an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, where when Sandy arrives home from a trip, SpongeBob starts singing a welcome home song, only to be stopped by the bus driver who yells "No one wants to hear you sing!".

Happens again when SpongeBob starts singing, "There no place like hoooome..." then gets cut off by Sandy's crying.

"Daria! The Musical" had one of Helen's co-workers seranade her, only to leave two lines in for an appointment.

The season 3 finale, a Musical Episode, has Twilight Sparkle opening with a song and dance number, only to suddenly be cut off at the end when she gets drenched with rain water.

In "Somepony to Watch Over Me", Apple Bloom starts singing about her plan to prove to Applejack that she doesn't need to be babied, but Scootaloo interrupts to point out "No time for a song! Applejack's coming!"

In the Futurama episode "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back", Hermes has gained his confidence back and expresses it through a song. At the end Zoidberg tells them he has a song of his own, which he starts to sing before he's cut off by the closing credits and lets out a disappointed "Aw!"

In the Celebrity Deathmatch episode "Presented By Big Bull Beer" during the Leonardo DiCaprio vs Jack Nicholson fight it appears that DiCaprio has won and he does the famous "king of the world" pose from Titanic while "My Heart Will Go On" plays in the background, suddenly Nicholson regains consciousness and brutally beats him to death, the song comes to a sudden halt with a record scratch sound.

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